A fantasy swordsman ... adventures in Iray shaders

The assignment was to switch out all the textures on a costume for new shaders -- and this turned out to be the easy part, though I have to admit, I haven't yet figured out how to get the metal shaders to behave themselves reliably, predictably. I'm getting there. Leather, lace, silk, glass -- no problem; but metals are tougher to squeeze good, predictable results out of ... which is why it was 'Photoshop to the rescue' again on this sword. After four hours rendering, I still had flocks of 'fireflies' in the gold ... unresolved pixels. Ack. This processor and video card are too slow! Before I can render metals properly, I'll need to upgrade ... uh, end of 2020 sounds doable. About a year and a half. 😭

Having said that, Photoshop rescued the metals and a bunch of apparently unrenderable pixels in the hair, so the net result is a rather good image: the Dae face, body slightly tweaked, wearing Michael 8's skinmap, a G3 hairdo that doesn't actually like G8 as well as it's supposed to (Shavonne hair), and the Dark Prince costume with every texture changed, right down to the rivets.

The sword is an old prop -- one of hundreds that can't be saved into a file by DAZ Studio 4.11, though it can be loaded. Go figure. Tech Support doesn't know why either. [Rolls eyes] But with new shaders, the old props look pretty neat. Now --

If I render the metals in an image that's 600 x 900 pixels, in two hours, it's finished. This one, above, is the proof of it! But if I put metal shaders into a 1200 x 1800 image, well ... I'll be in Photoshop rescuing the picture! Sticklebacks, to quote Uncle Bilbo.

Anyway, we're playing happily...

... and there's only a few shaders I still need to track down. Wood, bone, ground, satin, organics, so forth. I just wish Studio 4.11 knew how to save the old props into its files. That would make life soooo much easier. Still, I was smart enough to keep Studio 3 on board, so we can run both back to back, to get access to the props and characters that Studio 4.11 can load, but not save. So strange ... 'tis a puzzlement.

Pinup boy ... and Morning in Gadomar ... whooo!

Now we're cooking. Playing mix and match again. That's the Dae face, boy tweaked by me, he's wearing Michael 8's skinmap, Michael 4's hair, a fabulous rose silk shader on the shirt, big blue GP Character Eyes, Bryce 7 Pro sky behind DM's Gadomar set, from years and years ago  ... and a four hour render in Iray, after I went to bed. Take a closer look --

Now, those are the skintones we've been wanting to achieve. Four hours, is it? O...kay. I can live with that. The second picture --

That's a two-hour render -- Dae face, body and skinmap, wearing the Elan hair for G8. It actually needed to cook about another hour, but I just didn't have the time to let it go and go. That's the downside to Iray: it takes over the whole system, and while it's rendering, you just walk away and let it do its thing.

Anyway, we're just starting to get into the rarefied atmosphere where exceptional renders happen ... and I shopped another sale at DAZ, for two colossal packs of shaders. They'd have been A$105 for the pair of them, and in the sale, I got them both for $35, which I can just about afford. I now have something like 700 new shaders to play with, LOL: and there is so much to learn!

Having some serious fun with this, even though the file-save problems continue: I can't save anything. You just have to put the scene together, render it and dump it, because when you try to save something, when you reopen it, there's a pile of boxes where your 3D assets should be! DAZ tech support is still trying to figure this out, but -- no joy so far, and it's been on an open ticket with the help desk for two months now. Ack.

Anyway, back soon with more. But I'm grinning somewhat ... I have Iray halfway tamed. Wahoo.

Iray lights, glass shaders -- and 'his evil twin' ... he he he!

O...kay. DAZ was having a sale, and I was able to get the Genesis 8 Head Morphs for half price, plus a pack of glass shaders, and so forth. All of which inspired me to play. Two versions of the same character -- also two versions of the same hair. The character is about fifty percent my own, face and body; the hair is an adapted version of the Morley hair prop (which is "sticky uppy," lopsided and rather punk ... not to my taste at all). Anyway, here you have twins, a hero and a villain ...

-- this one being the villain! This is cool. It took a bit of painting in Photoshop after the fact, because after two hours each, these renders still have a bunch of "unresolved pixels," and I just don't have any more time to spend on them -- if, indeed, my computer will render at any higher resolution. I think I'm already maxed out as per the resolution I can get. More experiments are in order!

I know, I know, I said I was going to see if I could get the Yannis Rasta Dreadlocks to load and fit Genesis today (since I discovered that the M4 Mon Chevalier hair fits G8 so well), but it's going to be a looong job, and the way things worked out this afternoon, I didn't have time. However, it's high on my list of priorities.

It was fun playing with shaders on the set, too: I changed out the materials to glass and marble, which makes them much more visually exciting. This is where the fun begins, I think! Iray is all about shaders and ... lights. And I decided to save time, since my life is getting busy. Yep, I bought a pack of Iray "plug and play" lights. Probably saves you upwards of half an hour per project, and I imagine the end result will be better. (Blast. I'd intended to learn this, do it myself. And I probably could, given about six more months of pure frustration; but life is getting busy again ... the truth? I don't gotz the time to reinvent a wheel other people perfected yonks ago. So -- long story short: do like almost everyone else does, pay $11, buy a pack of lights, save time, and enjoy, LOL.)

Anyway -- tomorrow looks good for art, and I'll get to those dreadlocks! I hope. Stay tuned!

What you have here:

Genesis 8
Michael 8 skinmap
Face and Head Morphs
Morley Hair (adapted)
Dark Prince costume
All Action Poses for G8 Male
The Fountain set
Clear and Frosted Glass Shaders
Rock and Stone shaders
ElianeCK Lights
Photoshop post work

...everything except the Rock and Stone shaders came from the DAZ marketplace, and that final item was from Renderosity.

Oh -- one last thing I can add here. I've noticed that a lot of people are on the forums, very confused about how to install third party shaders (from CG Share, DeviantArt, Renderosity or wherever) so that DAZ Studio can find them. It took me a while to figure it out, but here's the directory structure for them:

C:\ Users > Public > Public Documents > My DAZ 3D Library > Shader Presets

...and to find them within Studio, go to:

Content Library pane, open Daz Studio Formats > My DAZ 3D Library > Shader Presets 

... awhatever you copied into this folder will be there.

Note: you'll almost certainly have to install the shader pack with Studio closed, then reopen it. "Refresh" ought to work to, uh, refresh the listed content, but it certainly doesn't on my system. You can run around in circles, trying to find something you just installed, and it doesn't show up till you close and reopen the program. Hope this helps! 

Mix and match ... M4 hair fits Genesis 8?!

Dae skinmap and face morph, customized body morph, GP Character Eyes, and (get this!) Michael 4 hair, the Mon Chevalier hair by Neftis. Yep, it fits the Genesis 8 figure. So surprised! 

AWOL for a few days ... domestic issues ... back again -- and no one is more surprised than me right now, because I ran an experiment to see if the M4 hair would fit the Genesis 8 figure, and lo and behold. Well, see for yourself. That's the Mon Chevalier hair prop by Neftis, and it dropped right onto Genesis 8 as if it was made to fit. The last time you saw this hairdo, Captain Kevin Jarrat was wearing it. Uh huh --

I honestly never expected it to work, but it just dropped into place. This opens up vistas of possibility -- for instance, will the Yannis M4 dreadlocks fit Genesis 8? Remember this hair, on the barbarian guardian --

That's the Rasta dreadlocks, which always looks fantastic on the M4 figures. There's no guarantee that it'll render in Iray, but -- what the heck, the Mon Chevalier hair renders well in Iray, so this has to be worth the experiment! Tells you what I'll be doing tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the file-save problems continue to bug me, making DAZ Studio 4.11 a right royal pain to use. I can load, render, save and reopen the Genesis smart content, but everything else is lost in the save routine. Studio 4.11 is corrupting the files during the save process? I dunno, but it's making it very difficult for me to do complex work. Also, I'm still far from happy with the lighting I'm getting with Iray. It's enough to make you tear out your hair. *Sigh* I might (gasp; groan) just do as everyone else does, admit defeat, give up and buy lighting sets. Uh huh. I even went to DAZ and scouted up the very lighting sets I'd buy, if I was going to surrender... I just haven't quite surrendered yet, LOL.

More experiments to run, now that the domestic issues are sorted. Let's give this another shot tomorrow.

Lace, leather and glass ... anyone for fantasy?

Lots of experiments going on in this one. The lace shader looks very good on the whole shirt rather than just the collar and cuffs ... the Elan hair has alternative transparency maps to make it thicker and shinier (nice!) ... the soft black leather looks great on the pants ... the simplest glass shader in the world turned an ancient prop into something quite interesting ... but try as I might, I couldn't get Iray to give me what looks like an "Iray render" of the skintones:

This has been into Photoshop for digital grading, and it's still far more like a raytrace than an Iray render. My challenge now is to figure out what happened to the fantastic skin tones I've come to expect from Iray. This is the Rex skinmap; you know for a fact the tones are in there. Why did they render blurry or muddy?? Good one. I'll look into it!

One of the give-aways with the basic DAZ Studio is a set of very basic shaders, just enough to get you started and whet your appetite for more. When I set up this scene, the only prop Studio 4.11 could find that would be interesting in context was this one, from Anton's Treasures of Egypt ... released circa 2010, maybe 2008! The surface textures on it render well in 3Delight, the raytrace engine, but Iray makes a mess of them. Now, the original texture was gold, but I haven't yet shelled out the bucks for a metals shader pack. So I had a rummage around through the shaders packed with Studio 4.11, and --

This would have to be the simplest glass shader imaginable, but it saved the prop. I wouldn't call this picture anything remotely like a high-rez render -- then again, nothing about the whole picture looks high-rez to me, even though it rendered for about two hours. I could have let it cook longer, but the fact is, I went over it closely, looking for unresolved pixels (ie, grain in the image). There aren't any. It just looks ... like a raytrace. So --

One of the things on my shopping list ... glass shaders. Like this:

Catalog image. See this...

Catalog image: see this...

Now, those are shaders! First, find out what happened to the skin tones on this picture ... why the whole render looks like a raytrace, even though it's an IBL-lit Iray render. Next, get one of these glass shaders and play! See what happens. I guess I have my assignment for the immediate future! Tomorrow we'll go back to basics, take nothing for granted and see what we can figure out.

Guy candy. Seriously.

Pirate? Moorish prince? Take your pick ... and check out the shaders on this! I switched out all the textures on the "Contemporary Romeo" costume. Silk and lace on the shirt, leather on the pants. This is actually the Rex character again, but wearing one of the alternative faces, and the full beard. Looks like a whole new character, in fact. Also ...

This is the Rex matte skinmap, with the "shine" turned off and the displacement turned on. The only thing it's short of, actually, is some veins. A body that looks like that has been worked hard in a gym, and he probably finished pumping iron about two minutes before the photo was taken. You'd see veins. There's a venous add-on for G8, and this is one of the next items I'll get.

Then --

Michael 8 ... wearing a Michael 4 shirt. Yes, Michael 4. The last place you saw that costume, Amadeus was wearing it. The only thing you can't wrangle is the sleeves: the morphs and parenting work, to make the costume fit the body shape, but the rigging in the shirt doesn't match the rigging n the figure, so it doesn't drop the sleeves over the arms. To get around this, I made the sleeves transparent. Then slapped a shader onto the shirt's body. He's also wearing third party add-on eyes, and Genesis 2 hair. I'm not in love with Michael 8, to be honest: the face does nothing for me, and the body's somewhat adolescent, but experiments are underway to adapt it. And in the meantime, there's plenty more to play with!

That's all from me for today. Soooo tired! Must hit the hay. Need sleep...

Michael 8 joins the party -- first look, in Iray

Michael 8 himself ... first look, as rendered by moi. Fairly nice renders, actually, and it's quite a nice skinmap, if very pale -- but I'm not sure I'm a tremendous fan of that body shape! It's a bit "eighteen years old next birthday." We'll be adjusting this with the body morphs ... oh, tomorrow, I expect!

In fact, DAZ was having one of their crazy store-wide sales today. I couldn't resist getting the Michael 4 Pro Bundle, which is thirteen items rolled into one (including the dangly bits for Genesis 8, ahem!). The usual price is about A$210, and I got it this morning for about A$80, which is a colossal saving. Couldn't not make the investment. The pack contains --

The M8 base figure, two other skinmaps (characters), two hair props of varying value, two packs of poses, five costumes, and the aforementioned "male anatomical elements," or whatever they delicately term the dangly bits these days. [Rolls eyes. Is prudishness on the rise lately?] So this is what you're downloading:

That's a nice library of goodies to play with. Add some really versatile shaders to this lot, and we can get some very nice results.

Speaking of shaders, I installed the pack I bought from Renderosity yesterday, and used the "rough sandstone" on the column M8 is leaning against there. That's a pack of rock and stone, including marble, concrete, bricks, pebbles ... it's going to be very handy indeed. But with some costumes to play with now, I'm going to be wanting fabric shaders. I love this:

Catalog image ... see this

Catalog image -- see this

Uh huh. Switch out the prosaic textures for something sumptuous and exotic. And do something with the Michael 8 body shape! Right now, he looks better with his clothes on ... let's see what we can do about that tomorrow, lol.

One last image for today:

This was a quickie to test a theory regarding the balance between IBL lighting and the, uh,  photometric light. And it worked! Safe to say, the lighting battle has been won. And I also stumbled over the dead easy way to get depth of field (DOF) to work. I mean, honestly -- ten seconds, one test render, and you're done.

Does anyone need to know how to do this stuff in Studio 4.11?? I still have plenty of problems about which I can do nada (4.11 will not save a file! That one is for tech support to fix, not me -- and they're not helping, not even 2%, after almost two months). But if you'd like to know the quick ways to make the new(er) DAZ do what you need it to do -- drop me a line, I'd be happy to share. You can always contact me via my gallery, and if you don't want to be bothered with emails, you can also contact me via a comment on my personal blog: put a comment, or request for secret-sharing, on this post, and Gmail will tell me I gotz a message. No problem. Comments are turned off on this blog because it was getting a lot of unpleasant remarks, being gay-friendly and dedicated to the heavy of the human form! Nooo, I am by no means an expert yet, but I've got a lot of stuff figured out -- enough to start having fun.

That's it for me, for today. Off to bed now. 'Night, all!

New character, old set ... new leathers, too!

An existing set, built in Sudio 3 for another scene a few months ago ... a new Genesis 8 character. This is "Foster," or "CC Foster," from the DAZ marketplace ... off the peg; I still don't have the face morphs, so we're using them pretty much as they come. I wanted something clearly different from Rex and Dae, and this one is very nice indeed. I'm delighted with the way he renders in closeup, too:

  

I've uploaded the portrait at 1200x1800 to give a good look at the eyes -- I switched out the model's own eyes for the GP Character Eyes, which are both ultra-realistic, and also go a long way toward curing the "brilliant white sclera" trouble you can get. (Then again, this is also lit with IBL lighting, which also part-way cures that problem...)

And we had a bunch of fun with shaders -- believe it or not, this is just a pair of jeans, but I applied one of the "Pd Soft Leader" shaders by "parrotdolphin" from DeviantArt, and the effect is great, turns them into leathers, not a mile away from something you'd see on The Musketeers:

That looks like a whole new costume, but it's not. Soooo nice to be able to do this! In fact, I was inspired to buy a set of rock and stone shaders from Renderosity, when I realized I was in big trouble with the set. Studio 4.11 won't load it properly (what a shock there), so I went back to Studio 3 and exported it as an OBJ, imported this into Studio 4.11 ...

Now, up to about three weeks ago, an OBJ used to load complete with its textures, ready to render, right? Then something happened, and wham! Now, though Studio 4.11 will load an OBJ, an will collect the textures (or materials), it refuses to apply them. You'd have to spend hours fiddling the original textures/materials into place. You could do that. If you did, the raytrace would look like this:

...and yes, that rock looks a heck of a lot better than what I ended up with in the Iray render of the exact same set. Because Iray does't even "see" the old textures -- those same columns rendered bright blue and shiny (WTF??), so I basically whacked a shader onto them:

...the only halfway applicable shaderI had was concrete, but at least it worked. Not what I wanted, but at least we got a render. I'd wanted to see what Iray could make of Michael 4 in the same set, and had to slog though the shader battle before I could get even halfway there. So --

Left: Iray. Right: Raytrace. Worth looking at full-size. There's things you prefer about the raytrace, things you prefer about the Iray. I know, I know. M4 is never going to render up brilliantly in Iray -- duh. Shader issues again. The first thing you notice is, the venous map has dropped out. And nothing I could do with persuade it to work, so  -- what can you do? Unless someone makes an Iray venous map for M4 ... like that's going to happen!

Soooo I wound up going to Renderosity and buying rock and stone shaders, which we'll play with tomorrow. (In fact, I'm trying to save a fortune's worth of "assets," which are stuck in Studio 3, because Iray only works properly with these shaders, and Reality is so slow, I'd be rendering the same picture for a week!) 

Tomorrow we'll see how the rock and stone renders up. This will be interesting. We'll see what we can do with Foster, too. I like the character a lot.  

Shader Wars: won! Fabulous eyes ... and the save-file fail continues

Safe to say, the "shader wars" have been won! The problem was, where to put the shaders so that DAZ Studio 4.11 can find the damn things. I tried everything. I mean, everything ... and at last, it worked with one pack. So I tried it with another. Got it! I can now use Iray shaders. Phew. This is "just" Michael 4. It's actually "the man in the hat," whom you've seen several times in different guises, but when I started to play with the shaders on the costume, the skinmap on M4 went ballistic! I have no idea how or why that would happen, but it did. So I switched it out for a different skinmap, which creates a slightly different character. Actually, nice! Michael 4 is never going to look incredibly good in Iray due to the old, old skinmaps, but this is not bad at all. It's the JM Alexandre skinmap, but not the body or face morphs. Those, I designed myself.

One of the best things about Genesis, I'll admit, is that you can get very, very close to the character and the renders still look dandy. In a sale last week, I got the GP Character Eyes for Genesis 8, at about half price, and this is the first chance I've had to play with them. Check this out:

That's not even a particularly high-rez render. I let it cook for an hour or so, at which point I'm out of time, so I cancelled it because ... frankly, in the last 20 minutes you can't see any real difference. The whole point of this was to play with the eyes ... dilate the pupils and so forth. Nice! Gotta like this.

In fact, if it wasn't for the sheer impossibility of saving a file in DAZ Studio 4.11, I'd say I was very happy with the program. However ... you take the top picture, which has buildings, a plant pot and plant, the character, hair and costume ... you SAVE it, then you reopen the file to do a bit more work on it later, and --

EVERYTHING is gone. The only thing that makes it through the process is the pose on the figure! The rest is utterly lost. So whatever you're going to render, it's one-shot, you can't come back to it. That's a major aggravation, and I'm seriously giving up on DAZ tech support. After six weeks of me trying to explain the problem to them (which pictures, diagrams, project files) they seem oblivious to it. Urk.

So ... shaders, check. Eyes, check. Lighting: check. Camera settings: check. Doing well here. And now ... to bed. It's late, I'm tired, so ... 'night, all!

"Hunters" in Iray ... now it starts to get exciting!

At last ... we start to flex our muscles with real, genuine scenes -- not just character tests and costume tests and hair experiments, but "every picture tells a story" type scenes. Genesis 8, Iray: got the lighting worked out, got the DOF (depth of field) worked out for Iray. And so long as I only muck about with the Genesis figures, DAZ Studio 4.11 will save the projects. No joy yet with saving the old figures or content. Every time I save a file, I reopen it to find a stack of boxes where Michael 4 used to be! Infuriating. (Mind you, having said that, Iray hates to render Michael 4 most of the time; it's pot luck and some of the results are just plain awful. Skinmaps that look lovely in a raytrace look like crap in Iray. So I'll probably actually stick with Studio 3 to render M4, until I have a far, far faster computer and can get Reality to work, because Reality renders M4 beautifully. One day...

For the moment, this is starting to get exciting:

These are off the peg characters -- Dae and Rex, by a designer called Gypsy Angel. Before I can start to design my own characters, I need the G8 head morphs, and a lot more hairstyles. Getting there -- one thing at a time, right?! Am juuuust starting to give up on DAZ tech support: I don't believe they know what the file-save problem is, much less how to fix it. (It might not be fixable, so it's up to me to find a work-around and just get past this. I think I'm about halfway there.)

I call this picture "Hunters" ... these guys are a team, and they're out there in the wilderness, among the remnants of a ruined civilization, tracking ... something or someone. This was a four-hour render in Iray, at which point I called it "good enough" because the last hour made no visible difference to the quality. That's as good as I'll get with my computer, and in fact, it's pretty good. I can live and work with this, so now we start to get some traction and go forward. (IBL lighting here, and complex render settings. If anyone is interested to know them, drop me a line -- I'd be glad to share what I've learned, and what works.)

Haven't posted art for a few days, because I just didn't get any results worth posting: not all experiments work, and although you learn a lot from things that don't work, you wouldn't upload the results! One thing I am working on, though, is an inventory of my "assets," being all the props, materials, poses, characters, whatever, I own. Got to do this. The whacked out way in which Studio 4.11 lists assets will make it utterly impossible to keep track of them without a list, so -- start as we mean to go on, as the old saying goes. The list is huge. I mean, HUGE. Am about halfway there, once again...

This one worked out fairly well:

That's the old Garden of Galahad set, rendered in Iray, with the lighting set up to simulate sunset or dawn. It's reasonably good, though I wouldn't say Iray really likes the old materials. It would doubtlessly be far happier with shaders, shaders, shaders ... but there aren't any for this, and even if there were, it would take all day, or days, plural, to replace all the old mats with shaders; and what would you spend the time for??? (I think I actually prefer the old raytrace, which isn't trying to be a photo, and does look rich and deep with texture and rugosity. There's a new word for you: the quality of being rugose. Look it up.)

Anyway -- more art soon. Lots and lots of things to play with! I just got some shaders from DeviantArt, and some poses from Renderosity. Must get some more hairstyles for G8, and I've been looking at these:

Ajax hair

Landis hair

Orson hair

Blair hair

Heath hair

Varun hair

Royce hair

...why don't I just go out and get that lot? Because that shopping list is worth over A$200! And also, most of these hairstyles are actually Genesis 3 styles which sorta-kinda fit G8. They can be a bear to work with, so I'm a little hesitant to lay down so much cash. There's no much available, yet, specifically for G8. Hopefully, designers are busy behind the scenes, but at Renderosity 99% of all G8 assets are (you guessed) for the female. There's only a couple of hairstyles for G8 Male, and they don't look very good at all. Ack.

As I said, one thing at a time. I like the look of Varun and Landis. Have put them on the wishlist, and ... the fact is, the rolling discounts are going on all the time. Everything, bar none, is on sale, every few weeks or so. I'll just keep an eye on them and be patient!

More soon. For now ... that's it for me, for today. Yawn. Heading for bed in a few minutes -- it's almost midnight, no wonder I'm yawning!

Warrior of the Wasteland, anyone --?? Plus his horse, and more...

This one is pretty good ... am getting enough costumes, wigs and textures (shaders?) to mix and match, and start coming up with something that's part-way original ... and getting enough experience to know that the automatic "wardrobe wizard" that's supposed to make Genesis anything fit Genesis 8 is not 100% reliable. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You pretty much take it as you find it, and go on to something else if it fails --

I'd say, "Hey ho," if 3D "assets" (costumes, hair, whatever) weren't so expensive. Stand by for a teeny little rant. Sorry, guys, but I gotta say this stuff. Having to buy everything afresh for each new base figure gets rough for someone whose pockets aren't so deep -- and in fact, I've heard this on several forums. Am not the only one saying it! Also, have been going through the DAZ Marketplace and looking for stuff designed specifically for G8 Male, which would take the ag out of the work; and the fact is, in terms of costumes and hair, there isn't so much, yet, for this guy. As usual, 95% of everything is done for the babe, G8 Female, and the male base figure is still severely neglected. So there just isn't -- yet -- the depth of costuming for him, though there are some lovely skinmaps (you're looking at one here: Rex). I'm almost tempted to go back and take a look at the Genesis 3 figure ... but that means I'll have to chuck another hundred bucks at skinmaps for G3, in order to tap into the larger wardrobe and hair. [Rolls eyes]

Anyway -- that's enough ranting. Let's look at what we can do rather than growling about what we can't, right?

One thing that didn't work out so well is the Shavonne Hair, which is a Genesis 3 hair prop which should fit G8 like a charm. Hmm. Not so good, actually, especially when you try to get it to get it to sit well over a costume. So this wild mane is about half Shavonne Hair, and half hand-painted. Not that you can't paint the hair; but you shouldn't actually have to. Still --

It's actually a hell of a nice result, so I'm not going to complain too much! The brushes to paint this hair, incidentally, are freebies, from All Free Download (dot com). Just go there and search for "photoshop brushes" and be astonished at what comes up. I'd love to give individual credits to the designers of these brushes, but the fact it, I used five different brush packs to get this effect and I have no idea who should be credited for what. It gets very muddled, very quickly, when you're trying to create something like this. Or this:

Best I can do with the old Millennium Horse from about 2010. There are better horse base figures now, I know! One day soon I'll have the cash to invest. For this one, above, I used CWRW's textures on the model, and also her Manes and Tails pack to achieve the luxurious mane in about a third the time it would have taken to paint it. (It's a 2D texture pack for Photoshop, available from Renderosity, if memory serves me; I know you can still get it). Two hours cooking in Iray, another hour to set it up before rendering last night, and another hour to paint it, this morning.  It's fairly decent, but I know -- fact -- the results you can achieve with the Hivewire Horse will blow this away.

Check this out, for a start:

Catalog image: Hivewire Horse base figure

I'll need about a hundred bucks for the base figure, textures and poses. One day! It's out there. If nothing else, I have a birthday coming, LOL. Everybody needs a hobby...

So the next thing I'm going to do is put this post-apocalypse barbarian warrior together with the black horse, which for some reason just renders better than this Hancock Bay. Or I'll try a new color/texture for the horse. Perhaps because I rendered them on the same day, I'm "seeing" them in the same story. I'd say he was a "warrior of the wasteland," due to the Badlands Gladiator costume (which reminds me somewhat of Mad Max, if you load the whole thing ... here, I turned off most of it, kept only the odds and ends I wanted, added a pair of jeans, then switched out the texture for a leather shader on the pants), but the horse is obviously in a green place. There's a story here, and it's tickling the edges of my imagination --

Stay tuned! Am also about to load up the Garden of Galahad set, see if I can render it in Iray. I might not be able to ... its a lot of polygons, and Iray is extremely demanding in terms of RAM. You can easily "choke" the CPU or GPU, which needs to hold every last polygon in memory. Ack. It's this set, a big one (I just rebalanced this piece and re-uploaded it here -- worth a look):

I also have no idea how good the Garden of Galahad set is going to look in Iray. First, all its textures and maps are designed for 3Delight. Second, I overdrove all the bump and displacement maps to get this effect:

...and I know ahead of time that overdriving bump and displacement maps doesn't work in Iray. So the Garden of Galahad could look very, very flat and disappointing in Iray. Won't know till I try, and this is today's first experiment! (Ooooh, how I wish Reality had worked out... fiddlesticks. 😶

Stay tuned...